Books › The varnishes of the Italian violin-makers of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and their influence on tone;, 1904 › scan 36
Scan 36
The varnishes of the Italian violin-makers of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and their influence on tone;, 1904
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1grasse" he dissolved his mastic and dammar, and to this solution he added his alcoholic solution of gamboge, sandal-wood, dragon's blood, &c. Having incorporated this mixture as well as possible, he proceeded to distill off or evaporate a good deal of the alcohol (he appears to have imagined that he eliminated the whole of it, in which he was mistaken).
3It is quite safe to assert, beyond all chance of contention, that there is not the least indication of the preparation of "essence grasse," of any such concoction or process, in the several writers quoted; neither in Alexis, Fioravanti, Auda, Zahn, Morley, Coronelli, Pomet, or Bonanni. Whatever credit is due for the ingenuity in producing this varnish, is due to M. Mailand. To assert, on the evidence presented, that this varnish was to be found in commerce at or before the time of Bonanni (1713), is to asseverate that which cannot possibly be sustained.
5M. Mailand came to his task with a settled conviction that the violin-makers used a varnish which was an article of commerce in their time. How he acquired this idea there is no evidence to shew. But his practice exhibited a good deal of common sense; he ascertained, from contemporary writers on the subject of varnish, what materials the violin-makers had at their disposal; applying modern methods to the concoction of these, he attempted to produce varnish similar to theirs.
7If the authors whose works he perused knew the varnish which the violin-makers used, it might have been expected that they would have given a receipt for this special purpose, as they did in other cases:—e.g., Alexis No. 2, "To give fine lustre to paintings";
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